The electronics industry continues to rely upon advances in semiconductor technology to realize higher-function devices in more compact areas. For many applications realizing higher-functioning devices requires integrating a large number of electronic devices into a single silicon wafer. As the number of electronic devices per given area of the silicon wafer increases, the manufacturing process becomes more difficult.
Many varieties of semiconductor devices have been manufactured having various applications in numerous disciplines. Such silicon-based semiconductor devices often include metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET), such as p-channel MOS (PMOS), n-channel MOS (NMOS) and complementary MOS (CMOS) transistors, bipolar transistors, BiCMOS transistors. Such MOSFET devices include an insulating material between a conductive gate and silicon-like substrate; therefore, these devices are generally referred to as IGFETs (insulated-gate FET).
Each of these semiconductor devices generally includes a semiconductor substrate on which a number of active devices are formed. The particular structure of a given active device can vary between device types. For example, in MOS transistors, an active device generally includes source and drain regions and a gate electrode that modulates current between the source and drain regions.
Furthermore, such devices may be digital or analog devices produced in a number of wafer fabrication processes, for example, CMOS, BiCMOS, Bipolar, etc. The substrates may be silicon, gallium arsenide (GaAs) or other substrate suitable for building microelectronic circuits thereon.
As devices scale down to the sub-micron level, electrical characteristics such as capacitance that were negligible in devices having dimensions in multiples of microns, have become significant. For example, in a sub-0.20 μm process there has been a renewed interest in materials with a low dielectric constant (i.e., “low k”).
A goal in processing sub-micron devices is to maintain a level of gate capacitance while minimizing the gate-to-source and gate-to-drain capacitance. As the oxide is made thinner the capacitance increases as shown in the relationship:
            C      ox        =                                        ɛ            o                    ⁢                      ɛ                          SiO              2                                                t          ox                    ·      A        ,
where
A=area of gate
∈SiO2=dielectric constant (or relative permittivity of SiO2 taken as 3.9)
tox=oxide thickness
The gate-to-drain capacitance is especially critical for transistor performance as it is amplified during switching due to the Miller effect. For example, in a series of logic stages, the equivalent capacitive loading to the previous logic stage is the gate-to-source capacitance multiplied by a factor of 1 plus the gain of the transistor. If the transistor has a gain of 100, the observed input capacitance would be 101 times the gate-to-drain capacitance. Consequently, it is desirable to not alter the parameters that tend to increase that capacitance. Therefore, using a dielectric material having a lower dielectric constant lowers the capacitance. It is advantageous to use lower k materials throughout the integrated circuit design where possible to minimize the parasitic capacitance.
There is an increasing demand in the semiconductor industry for improved insulating materials with lower dielectric constants. The requirement for low k materials for sub-quarter micron and smaller devices has renewed the interest in spin-on dielectrics such as methyl silsesquioxane (MSQ) and hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ). HSQ has a dielectric constant of from 2.8-2.9. The empirical formula of HSQ is (HSiO3/2)n. HSQ may be used as an inter-level dielectric for building multi-level semiconductor devices. Low-k materials usually are relatively less dense than silicon oxides or silicon nitrides. Some of these low-k materials are made porous by design. The porosity of these materials tends to degrade their mechanical strength.